


Hidden Away

by morning_fangirl



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dedicated to fun little callbacks, Memories, The TARDIS is infinite, kind of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:36:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27531622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morning_fangirl/pseuds/morning_fangirl
Summary: What if the reason why we never see anything from old companions is because the Doctor has locked it all up?This one-shot explores how the Doctor holds onto their friends, and what happens when Yaz finds the shrine while exploring in the TARDIS.
Relationships: The Doctor & The Doctor's TARDIS, The Doctor & The Master (mentioned), The Doctor/River Song
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	Hidden Away

Endless halls. Infinite rooms. You could walk for days and never run out of new rooms. That is according to Yaz, who has been on the TARDIS for two months (she thinks). And she is correct.

On her assumed sixty-first day, Yaz wanders the halls of the TARDIS. Somehow, all the rooms she is passing are new to her. Yaz has no idea how she actually knows that the rooms are new; they literally all look the same. White doors on white doors upon white doors. The only differential between the doors are some circular designs that she has seen on the console. Yaz believes that the Doctor has thrown away comments on that being her language, so that would make sense why the doors of the  _ Doctor’s  _ ship were labeled in her language.

For the first time in her wandering, Yaz came across doors that resembled her and Ryan and Graham’s bedroom doors.

The first door has the circular writing and a little red rose painted above the intricate pattern. Yaz has looked into so many rooms over the past two months, the doors just well… open. So, of course, Yaz goes to try to open this door just like she has with all the others. However, when she puts her hand on the door, a shock is sent through her system.

Yaz leaps back from the door with a small sharp yelp. What could be behind that door that’s so important? Yaz finds herself torn between finding Ryan or Graham or trying another door. There is only a split second of uncertainty though. It had taken her this long to find this set of doors. If she goes back to find one of the boys, who knows if she will find her way back.

The next two doors have a stained appearance. The first has ‘Captain’ written in block along with maybe a WWII era bomber with a pilot in a gas-mask and the other one has a simple car outline. Looking carefully, Yaz thinks she can make out a Mickey Mouse(?) head outline in the left corner. With trepidation, she goes to open the WWII inspired door. This time there is no electricity exchanged, the door just won’t open.

There is a black door after these three. Three more after it. And two across from it. Yaz decides to try it. To her surprise, it opens. 

Inside, there are hundreds of photos and trinkets and a few larger objects. Sitting on a book is a paper TARDIS—it looks like it was made by a child, but it is beautiful and well-done. Lifting up the craft, Yaz spies the book’s title:  _ 101 Places to See _ .

On the wall are framed photos. Interestingly enough, Yaz doesn’t recognize anyone in the photos. It’s the Doctor’s TARDIS, you would think she would be in at least some of the photos. These must be the people the Doctor lost Yaz realizes, the Doctor’s family. Still strange though, that not a  _ single  _ photo has the Doctor in it. A couple have a blonde who can’t be any older then herself. Three wedding photos are on display (she’s sure two of them are at least because they look like traditional Earth weddings). A few are of a brunette who has that same look of wonder and adventure as the Doctor (the photos must span at least five years if not more). 

Four people really stick out to Yaz. There’s just something familiar about them… they almost remind her of the Doctor. One of them wears a leather jacket and has big ears. Another has spikey hair and wears suits (and she thinks chucks from a couple full-length pictures). The third wears a bow-tie of all things and has a big-chin. And the final man has unruly gray-hair and attack eyebrows. The Doctor once mentioned being a white-haired Scotsman… no that was too ridiculous even for traveling with the Doctor.

On the back wall are the circles Yaz has seen all over the TARDIS. Underneath the symbols are plain English… names. 

“Jack Harkness—impossible flirt; you should have bought me that drink. Mickey Smith—you became quite something Rickey. Rose Tyler—the pink and yellow girl who saved little old me. Martha Jones—the woman who walked the Earth; thank you. Donna Noble—the most important woman in all of existence. Amelia Pond—the girl who waited—and Rory Williams—the Last Centurian who waited 2000 years. Danny Pink (I don’t know why I’m adding this man who hated me, but he cared for Clara and helped me on two occasions). Clara Oswald—my Impossible Girl; I like to think I showed you the stars, that I ran and remembered, but I know in the end I let you be brave. River Song, Melody Williams-Pond—my wonderful wife, Hell in High Heels, who never failed to surprise me, to call out a ‘Spoiler warning,’ a ‘Hello, Sweetie,’ or an ‘I hate you;” if we ever meet again neither of us will have spoilers, for once we will be completely linear; rest well my love, I always see you, I always hear you. Bill Potts—you brought life back into this old man and will always be my best student. Nardole—I liked you more than I ever let on. Koschei— I tentatively put you down my oldest friend for you always surprise me; please do it again.”

Tears cling at Yaz’s eyelashes. “You’re not supposed to be in here,” comes a somewhat angry voice from the doorway.

Yaz turns to see the Doctor with her arms crossed standing at the threshold looking less than pleased. The Doctor walks toward her snagging the paper TARDIS on her way. “How did you find this corridor?” she asks the anger melting from her voice and being replaced by vulnerability as she turns the child’s craft in her hand.

“I just stumbled upon it. I sometimes wander around the TARDIS; I almost always find a new room… that will probably never be seen again,” Yaz calmly replies. She follows up with two questions of her own, “Doctor, what is this room? Why aren’t you in any of the pictures?”

The Doctor sighs replica timeship still in her hand. “I guess you could say it’s a shrine to all the people I’ve traveled with since the Time War. The rooms around this one… they…” deep breath, “they belong… or well belong **ed** to the companions whose photos and trinkets are in this room.”

“So you were married?”

The Doctor gives a small nod.

“And she died?”

“First time I met her,” is the reply laced with affection. “She was a psychopath sent to kill me, but I totally married her.”

“First time you met her she… how does that work?”

“Our timelines ran a bit front-to-back. We met in the wrong order, but we loved each other.”

“You know that sentence for ‘Danny Pink’ is kind of funny,” Yaz says trying to get a less difficult subject.

The Doctor doesn’t smile, her mood doesn’t change at all. “2015 when the dead came back to life without emotion. I never got along with PE, but Clara choose him for some reason. A soldier,” the Doctor shakes her head. “He hated me from the beginning. But he wanted to save Clara and happened to save the world one time I couldn’t in the process. I think I may have a couple photos of him and Clara stashed away somewhere… no idea why. I still don’t know why I put his name up there with the rest of ‘em. I guess I felt a weird obligation.” The Doctor shrugs.

“Oh,” is all Yaz can say. 

“I really think we should leave,” the Doctor tells Yaz. “This is a private space and it isn’t any of your business.” The blonde turns to leave the room.

“Why do you keep it all locked? Is that what happens? You lose someone and lock everything you have of them in a far-off impossible to find room,” Yaz asks. There are so many people here, and the Doctor doesn’t talk about a single one of them.

The Doctor turns around to face Yaz again. “Did you think you were the first?”

“What?”

“Did you think you and Ryan and Graham were the first humans I whisked off into time and space, everything there ever was and ever will be?”

“N-No that would be stupid.”

“Do you know how old I am? I am over three-thousand years old. I spent four and a half billion years in a confession chamber for Clara Oswald. I have lost so many people… I don’t think you could ever understand. The people in this room are only the people since I fought in a bigger war than you could imagine. If I don’t lock all of that away, only to be revisited when I feel up to it, it would overwhelm me.

“Sometimes, something will make me think of one of them, and it takes so much strength for me to keep it together. After I lost my Ponds, I did dwell. I sat on a cloud over Victorian London and just thought about how I destroy the lives of everyone I meet. I swore off companions. Then, I found a mystery wrapped in an enigma squeezed into a skirt that was just a bit too tight. Clara Oswald, only two people could possibly know me better, River and Koschei. It wasn’t the first time I swore off companions. I did the same after Donna had to leave. But then I crashed into the garden of seven-year-old Amelia Pond, who had a crack in her wall, and made her wait fourteen years to see the universe.

“So, yes. I lock most of the photos and trinkets and anything else away in a room. I leave a couple in my room, but I barely go in there more than I do this room. My friends have always been the best of me. But none of this, not a single word of what I said, not a single photo or memento or belonging that you saw, was any of your business.”

All Yaz can do is stare at the Doctor. The blonde has gone on few tirades like this one, that Yaz has heard anyway. Yaz never thought she would be on the receiving end of something like that from the Doctor of all people, and yet here they were.

Softer the Doctor asks Yaz a very not rhetorical question, “How would you feel if someone walked in on all your dearest, most private memories, and then asked why they had never been allowed to see them? Or how about from the other side, how would you feel if someone came and saw those private memories, someone you had never met, when you could never see them again?”

“I wouldn’t like that on either side of that equation.”

“Exactly. And that, that Yaz is what you did today by coming into this room.” With that the Doctor turns to the side and signals for Yaz to leave. Which the nineteen-year-old does.

Yaz closes the door behind her. When she knows she’s alone, the Doctor falls onto her knees in the middle of the room surrounded by all the memories with her recent companions. Silent tears pour down her face. She picks up Amy’s replica TARDIS again and lets a watery smile pass her lips. She manages to stand-up and walks over to the side table with a couple books stacked on it. On top,  _ 101 Places to See _ rests. The Doctor puts Amy’s TARDIS down and picks up the book, her Impossible Girl’s favorite book--which says a lot when she’s talking about a soufflé-obsessed English teacher. She opens it and page one is a maple leaf. Not the “most important leaf in all of human history,” but just a leaf to replace the first page that was lost all those years ago on Akhaten.

Walking over to a self, the Doctor pulls out a worn blue book.

“It’s a good thing she didn’t find you,” she whispers to the book that holds every out of order meeting with River.

After Darillium, her white-haired Scotsman self had been stupid and risked the Library to grab River’s diary and sonic screwdriver. The pages of the little blue handwritten book filled with every moment from after she had given away the rest of her regenerations until they faced the Weeping Angels in Manhattan losing her parents.

Setting down the diary, the Doctor makes her way to the coat rack in the back of the room. One of Rose’s jackets still hangs there after three-thousand years. Somehow, the TARDIS got Bill’s prized jacket which hung next to Rose’s. On the top, one of the hats Donna had brought with her in case there was a Plant of the Hats sits idly. Occasionally on a crazy whim, the Doctor still searches for a plant filled with hats in memory of the most important woman in all of creation. Instead of hats, they got deadly crystal plants and man-eating library’s.

On another self, “Fur Elise” lies. She will never know why Missy had the actual music, when she had memorized it faces ago. Underneath the sheet music is a letter Missy had written at the beginning of her vault confinement.

_ Dear Theta, _

_ So, after everything we’ve been through, you decided to save me. I guess stooping as low as begging actually got me something. One thousand years. You. And. Me. I honestly don’t think you can do it.  _

_ “Run you clever boy and remember me.” _

_ Apparently, you forgot that, but it sums you up pretty perfectly. You love the running, always have. That’s what you do, ‘Doctor,’ you run from your problems. _

_ It’s a true tragedy that you forgot your 5’2”, big-eyed, souffle loving, impossible puppy. I worked so terribly hard to find the perfect companion for you. A control-freak who would start out by letting you control them until one day stubborn ole you would let them control you. Yet, my dear friend, you did. I think you loved her, but now, alas, I’ll never get my suspicions one hundred percent confirmed. _

_ I am truly sorry about your domestics ending with your wife’s death. Whoever was able to get the Doctor to settle down was a very special person. Not even puppy could get you to do that.  _

_ I never lost sight of you. Always knew what you were up to. Those precious Ponds, wasting their short lives away waiting. Oopsy, that will probably get me in trouble. I’m stuck in this vault, so what punishments will you dole out to me when I break your rules? _

_ Oh, Theta, I know you could never believe it, but I do miss how we used to be back on Gallifrey. I don’t miss that place with their uptight society and ideas on child-rearing. However, I miss you and our friendship. I do hate the empathy and hormones and all the other things that come with being a woman. Very glad I’ve gotten to spend most of my lives as men. Much easier to hate as a man. I guess that means the deeds I committed in this body took extra skill. Very proud of that Cyberman plan; would have worked too if it wasn’t for puppy falling in love with that soldier. And I was absolutely brilliant on Skaro. Almost made you hate yourself forever, but puppy found her ‘puppy-love’ she had held away for you and saved her skin. _

_ Well, my oldest dearest friend, I imagine that a part of me will always love you. A part of me will always long for our friendship. _

_ Yours truly, through all of time and space, from Gallifrey to you beloved Earth, _

_ Koschei, The Mistress, Missy _

A single lone tear runs down the Doctor’s face. “I remember her Koschei. I remember Clara Oswald. I don’t know why you insisted on calling my friends pets. Clara and Bill and Naldo. No one is disposable; I really had hoped you would learn that stuck with me for a millennium. Where are you hiding out in the universe, Missy? ‘Death is for other people,’ right?”

The Doctor folded the short letter up and put it back in its envelope. She runs her finger along the spines of the books on the shelf. At the end,  _ Melody Malone _ stands, the afterword taped back in. She has always hated endings, but bowties was something else when it came to them. Amy and Rory together in the end. That’s how it was supposed to be. She had promised to keep them safe. 

“Stand up job,” she thinks. “At least they got to live full lives together. Even if it was years before they were born.”

At some point, she doesn’t remember when exactly, the Doctor had moved Martha’s phone from the console to this room. It didn’t ring when the children stopped playing or when people stopped dying, so the Doctor assumed it would never ring again. And if it did, the time vortex would have some sick sense of humor to put the call through to this body or whichever ones come next.

After bowties and Clara had to journey to the center of the TARDIS, the Doctor had relocated the  _ History of the Time War _ . In the library, anyone could wander in on it. No one was supposed to find this room. The Doctor will never know how Clara read the Gallifrian book. The TARDIS does  **not** translate Gallifrian. Maybe it was a memory from an echo. Clara had gotten those sometimes even before she fractured herself across all of time and space.

“Why would you let Yaz in here?” the Doctor asks her longest most faithful companion. “This is a sacred place that not even River knew about.”

The ship beeps in response.

“Sexy, you let River come here? You think you know someone,” the Doctor hangs her head. “Should’ve known. You would let her steal the you. Hide alcohol in the round things. River Song, Melody Pond, archeologist and psychopath. I wish I could see her again. I really miss her. The only wife I really loved.”

The TARDIS replies again with more series of noises only the Doctor can understand anymore.

“Why did you let Yaz see this?”

*Beeps*

“Of course I’m sheltering them. They don’t need to see the Oncoming Storm.”

*Beeps*

“I know everyone else saw it at one point. Martha saw it too much probably. Look I’m not traveling alone, I’m being good for Martha, Donna, Amy, River, and Clara. I’m listening to all the times they told me to find someone because I’m rubbish alone! That’s the point of companions, right? To control my self-sacrificing and reign me in. Well, look I’m not showing them the darkness and therefore it’s being reigned in.”

*Beeps*

“Don’ give me that! None of tha’ they won’ be able to do it when it really counts if they don’ know what your capable of. ‘Without hope. Without witness. Without reward!’ I’m living up to never being cruel or cowardly, but always kind. That’s all I’m doing!”

*BEEPS*

“SO WHAT! SO WHAT IF I’M NOT LETTING ANYONE ELSE GET CLOSE! I TOOK COMPANIONS! I AM NOT ALONE! I DID NOT SWEAR OFF COMPANIONSHIP AGAIN, SO WHO CARES IF I AM KEEPING THEM AT ARM'S LENGTH!” the Doctor yells to her ship tears streaking down her face.

She pauses and takes a deep breath. This time her voice is barely above a whisper, as she looks back to the floor. “If I keep them at arm’s length, if I don’t get attached, maybe I won’t destroy their lives. I didn’t make a stubborn promise to no more companions that just gets broken when I find a mystery. I just promised not to get as attached this time. You saw what losing Rose and Donna and Amy and Clara and River did to me. Even if I break this promise and let people in again, I will never fall in love again. No more silly crushes like Rose Tyler that break me when something happens. And yes, now looking back I see that wasn’t love. It could have been after experiencing love with River and Clara.”

This time the TARDIS beeps come across as a whisper in the Doctor’s mind.

“Please, don’t. Please, don’t remind me of their words. I know they always loved it. But the Ponds, Clara, they should have given me up when they had the chance. I will always admire Martha for that, being able to see my destructiveness and leave while she was still alive. Donna lost her memories. Amy and Rory lived out of time, they lost their chance at parenthood. Clara and Bill lost their lives.”

The TARDIS gives a bashful beep.

The Doctor’s head whips up. “What? Clara’s out there with Ashildr proving how much she became like me by running as long as she can. Copying Mr. ‘Bowties are cool’ between meeting Hitler and Lake Silencio. And Bill’s out there forever because Heather came back and save her. WHY ARE YOU JUST TELLING ME NOW?”

*Beep*

“There wasn’t a good time? It’s been a few months since I’ve regenerated, THERE HAS BEEN PLENTY OF TIME!”

*BEEEEP*

“I wouldn’t go after Clara. Have a little faith in me! I know better than that. Bill on the other hand, there is nothing wrong with seeing her again.”

*beep*

“I most definitely am going to try and track the pilots when I go back to the console room,” the Doctor says angrily pacing the room. She stops to pick up a little blue envelope with the number one written on it.

“No, I’m not going to do that,” she sighs. “I hate going back. You still should have told me, though.” She set down the envelope that invited her to Utah. All the years later, the Doctor could still feel River’s slap.

“You still haven’t answered my question, Sexy.”

*Beep*

“Cheeky. Not the oldest question in the universe. I still remember my name, thank you. Why would you show Yaz this room, this corridor?”

Silence falls. A minute goes by before the TARDIS replies to her thief.

“Well, I guess that’s a pretty good answer. Although I don’t agree in the slightest. I can’t believe you did it. An invasion of privacy is what it is, but at least you had a good reason. Always do, don’t you. Taking me where I need to go, not necessarily where I want. Is that why you didn’t like Clara? You didn’t choose her, Missy did.”

The ship gives a response that comes across with a little shame.

“That’s right, I finally figured it out. You choose them for me. I always know who because you choose them. I had to wait for fourteen years to show Amelia the universe because she had to fall in love with Rory and become friends with Mels, so I could have River. It only took me… well I lost count long ago.”

The Doctor rubs the wall right next to the door. “Thanks ole girl. I think that’s enough reminiscing for today.”

The Thirteenth Doctor walks out of the room filled with her past and walks back to her console room filled with all the possibilities of how she will shape her future.

**Author's Note:**

> I was going through my works and decided to post this since it's just been sitting in google docs completed gathering dust.


End file.
